I'm a gun owner. 'Snuffy' is my .38 snubnose Smith & Wesson. As a woman, I know that a firearm is the only thing that truly equalizes me if I'm faced with someone determined to do me harm. Anyone who enters my home with malevolent intentions will not leave standing up. It's that simple.

As a defender of the Second Amendment, I knew it was only a matter of time before opponents of our right to bear arms couldn't stand it anymore and started to exploit the tragedy brought to us by the cowardly freak dubbed the Beltway Sniper. Anti-gun political candidates are using it to make hay with their self-defense-supporting opponents; professional haters of firearms are, as usual, shouting from hill and dale that the sky is falling....

Ginni Wolf, executive director of Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse, declared that the Beltway Sniper has proven her group's argument that there are "too many guns out there, and it's very easy for these types of people to obtain guns."...

What planet is she on? What the sniper has proven is that there aren't enough firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens! Here's a news flash for Ms. Wolf – the Beltway is essentially a gun-free zone. There, law-abiding citizens do not carry weapons, leaving them unarmed and defenseless to face a maniac killer who does not care about rules.

The sniper isn't cowed by gun laws or the rhetoric of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend about the evils of firearms. Gun laws wouldn't have saved her father, just as they aren't saving the innocent good people who also have been murdered by a deranged man. The deranged and the criminal will always get their guns, just as those who wanted a drink during Prohibition got their booze....